New law?

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  • thelawnet
    thelawnet Posts: 719
    walkingbootweather wrote:
    Shame the court transcript can't be unearthed. The story is discussed in some detail on another forum. There is lots of speculation and suggestions that the incident was mis-reported and this may not have been a simple case of a reckless cyclist wilfully running into an innocent bystander. . My apologies to dondare who was making similar points – I must learn to not automatically believe everything I read.

    Yup, this could easily have gone the other way. A story from my area, which occurred on a Sustrans cycle path in a reasonably decent area (not exactly Toxteth)

    http://www.woking.co.uk/article/202/Cyc ... al+towpath

    "A CYCLIST was punched, kicked and robbed of cash and his mobile phone on a towpath in Woking.

    Surrey Police said the 30-year-old victim was cycling along the Basingstoke Canal towpath from Woking town centre in the direction of Goldsworth Park when he came across a group of five men on the path in front of him.

    When he stopped to allow them to let him past he was grabbed by two of the men and told to hand over his money and phone.

    The men then punched and kicked the victim before making off in the direction of Goldsworth Park."

    That one did not make the national news because nobody died and because the cyclist was on the receiving end, but when I see groups of youths when I'm on my bike I get very nervous, because you never know when one of them will find it amusing to knock you off with a potentially identical outcome to the girl who was hit by the cyclist in the original story.
  • walkingbootweather
    walkingbootweather Posts: 2,443
    Just last night In was cycling home along a wide shared path/cycle way. A group of young adults were walking towards me then one of them dropped their phone and pretty much stepped into my path to try and retrieve it. It was all I could do to try and avoid her and nearly came off in the process.

    In retrospect I should probably have slowed a bit more than I did, and I would hope any fair observer would have seen the incident for what it was, but a mischievous journalist might have made this into another reckless cyclist story.
    Nobody told me we had a communication problem
  • snailracer
    snailracer Posts: 968
    Vaseline wrote:
    Whatever the law says, my view is that if you ride your bike on a pavement you are cycling dangerously whether you kill anyone or not. Mongs the lot of em.
    But if there is a bit of paint on the pavement and some blue signs on the lamposts, then it becomes magically legal and safe, yes?
  • tarquin_foxglove
    tarquin_foxglove Posts: 554
    the sun wrote:
    Howard – who paints road markings – said he was aiming for a gap between Rhiannon and her pals.

    He said: "After calling someone and not moving or walking further right, I didn't think they had any intention of getting back to the path.

    "It happened so quickly. I had a decision to make. Whether right or wrong, I had a decision to make which I made."

    full 'article' http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1399035.ece

    A similar incident happened with me on Holloway Road, a herd of pedestrians decided to run across the road from my right in a gap in traffic but the gap contained me.

    I shouted "watch out" and started to slow and the first person saw me & stopped, then the next person saw me & stopped but a bit closer the kerb etc. essentially the group funnelled me to the kerb but there was 'light at the end of the tunnel' and they were stopping, so I carried on through the gap and then a woman ran right into me. Incredibly lucky that neither of us were seriously hurt.

    I compounded a bad decision by a pedestrian, & compared to Howard & Rhiannon Bennett, we caught a break.

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